optimism (asking for heartbreak)
by Someone aka Me
Summary: "Remus is too world weary already, too cynical. He holds Sirius at arms length. Sirius is too optimistic, Remus thinks. He's going to get his heart broken, some day." Wolfstar.


For Sylvia, for GGE 2017. Love you, darling.

Remus is demi here but he doesn't know that's a thing so.

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When they meet, they are eleven, too young to understand what it will mean. Remus is too world weary already, too cynical. He holds Sirius at arms length. Sirius is too optimistic, Remus thinks. He's going to get his heart broken, some day.

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They are twelve when Remus finds out they know. Sirius and James and Peter, they _know_. They've known for moths, Sirius says, but they've been waiting for him to come to them about it. They've known for months, and they've let him sleep beside them anyway.

Remus keeps waiting for the hammer to fall, but it never does. They know, and yet they don't seem to _care_. The only thing that changes is that they now visit him in the hospital wing after his transformations.

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They are thirteen when Sirius admits to Remus, drunk on sleep deprivation, that he wants to know what it would be like to kiss a boy. That he thinks he would like it just as much as kissing girls. Remus doesn't know what to say to that.

"Okay," he says into the darkness of the ceiling of the Common Room, where they are both sprawled out on couches. Because it is okay. Remus turns into a beast every month; he's never really felt like he's in a position to judge anyone else.

Remus has never kissed anyone at all. He's not really sure he wants to — as a general rule he finds girls to be confusing. He wonders what it would be like to kiss a boy instead.

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They are fourteen when Sirius tells Remus he intends to become an animagus. Remus feels his lungs stop working. The entire idea is hairbrained and terrifying and _wonderful_. It is nothing Remus ever expected. He is selfish enough to want it with all of his being.

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They are fifteen when Sirius calls Remus his best friend out loud where Remus can hear him for the first time. It's casual, like it's something he says all the time, and Remus is frozen, blinking. Sirius quirks an eyebrow at him, but they're in the middle of a crowd so Remus just shakes his head.

Sirius asks, later. Remus stammers out an explanation, about the words "best friend" and how he assumed James would get that title. Sirius laughs, his head tipped back, bright and radiant. "James is my brother, Remus. You're something else." He smiles, genuine, not a smirk in sight, and Remus can't help the answering curl of his lips. He knew — well, Sirius is his best friend, but he never suspected the reverse would be true.

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They are sixteen when Sirius leaves his parents' home for the last time. He goes to James, and James contacts Remus, who winds up at the Potter's as well, at least for a while. Remus thinks about being eleven, about callously thinking this boy who keeps his heart so open would have it broken one day, and he cries for what they both have become. He would give anything to keep the world from hurting Sirius any more than it already has.

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They are seventeen when they join the war officially. They are too young to be soldiers, but there isn't anyone else. War is cruel. Death Eaters are crueler. The world grows bleak, and Remus has never been so unhappy to be right. He wants to wrap himself in Sirius's optimism and hide from everything. He wants to stop trying to treaty with the werewolves who think him too human and the humans who think him too feral. He wants to go _home_.

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They are eighteen when they kiss for the first time.

It is Remus' first kiss, and something about that seems weird — he has fought in a war, but he has never kissed anyone. If it were anyone else, Remus thinks, he still probably wouldn't want to. But it's Sirius, whom he loves and trusts more than anyone else in this world. Sirius, who brings the light, the brightest star in the whole damn sky.

The kiss is soft and dry and it feels like something that has always been there, waiting for them to find it.

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They are nineteen and they share everything. Whenever Remus is home, in the home that they share, they soak up what little time they have. They lie in bed, curled together like parentheses, enclosing something soft and special between them. Remus feels like he is stealing time. He was never meant for happiness like this, and he is waiting for it to be snatched away from him.

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They are twenty when James and Lily have a child. His name is Harry. He is the most perfect thing to be born of war, and Sirius _adores_ him. Remus doesn't know what to do with children, he never has, but he would do anything to make sure Sirius keeps smiling the way he smiles at his godson.

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When everything falls apart, they are twenty-one. Remus finds that his cynicism was not absolute, no matter what he thought at age eleven. He allowed enough optimism inside to give his heart the space to crack. Maybe it was never Sirius who was destined for heartbreak.


End file.
